This is just going after Al Shabaab who is behind that big Kenyan mall attack a few months back. Since we can't exactly send in the FBI and grab them in Somalia, it makes sense to try and pick them off with a drone. We did try a seaborne raid by SEALs awhile back, but they aborted instead of causing collateral damage (and got away without injury). Nothing really to see here and it's good for Obama to use the tools in his arsenal to remove threats to ourselves and our allies.

A drone is better option than a pilot or a team on the ground. If you lose a drone, it is a couple million, you start losing guys and it can lead to a full scale involvement costing billions and trillions and numerous lives. Unfortunately all targets are not as drone friendly as terrorists in remote lawless areas. Drones can breed hostility to be sure, but given the area of operations there isn't a whole lot of options when you identify a threat. If you kill some terrorist family members and friends, you may make them hostile, but chances are they weren't exactly friendly to the US to begin with. And anger against the US doesn't necessarily mean people will take up arms and chances are they won't be all that effective anyway so you are degrading their capabilities by removing effective members even if you create a few low level terrorists in the process.

Code Pink? And they've done just exactly what now? Say in 2013, besides telling one another what they would do if anybody ever listened to them, and, in general, seething ineffectually. Do I sense pent up rage, just waiting for a Republican to be elected, so that it can burst forth, with righteous anger? Is that the Code Pink, you're talking about?

DrPainMD:Popular Opinion: DrPainMD: Satanic_Hamster: SpinStopper: A missile to take out one guy? isn't that sort of like using hand grenades to get rid of ants?

Might be cheaper then sending in commando unit, especially if there were loses. Also, there might have been timing/window of opportunity issues.

Cheaper yet would be for us to mind our own business. Can't biatch about them killing us if we're going to be killing them.

lots of people had that opinion before they bombed pearl harbor.

You can't possibly believe that we were minding our own business up until Pearl Harbor.

Actually, we pretty much were. Certainly our hands weren't clean in our own hemisphere, and the oil and scrap embargo on Japan was hurting them plenty; but the US didn't have much to do with all the colonies in Asia or the dustup in Europe prior to WWII.

You can believe what you like, of course, and being you, you likely will; but everything prior to Pearl Harbor was all on Europe. That was THEIR fault.

Popular Opinion:DrPainMD: Unless Congress has declared war, everybody involved, from Obama all the way down to the guy who pressed the button, should be sitting in jail awaiting trial for first degree murder. All this accomplished is to give more people a valid excuse to hate the US (IOW, mission accomplished).

DrPainMD:Unless Congress has declared war, everybody involved, from Obama all the way down to the guy who pressed the button, should be sitting in jail awaiting trial for first degree murder. All this accomplished is to give more people a valid excuse to hate the US (IOW, mission accomplished).

Unless Congress has declared war, everybody involved, from Obama all the way down to the guy who pressed the button, should be sitting in jail awaiting trial for first degree murder. All this accomplished is to give more people a valid excuse to hate the US (IOW, mission accomplished).

Slartibartfaster:The blast radius is a cost too - ID prefer there was a unit sent in than innocents in the blast radius.

Old "electricians working on the Death Star" debate. While I agree with a need to minimize/avoid civilian casualties, but if you're knowingly hanging out with militants/terrorists, then you might want to question your judgement of whom you have over for dinner. It's not like the US blowing up guys like this left and right is a new or unknown thing.

If you know your Uncle Bob is a terrorist whom the Americans would love to blow up, don't have him over for f'ing Sunday dinner with your family.

Here's Peggy Noonan's prediction for the state of the union:"No one's really listening to the president now. He has been for five years a nonstop windup talk machine. Most of it has been facile, bland, the same rounded words and rounded sentiments, the same soft accusations and excuses. I see him enjoying the sound of his voice as the network newsman leans forward eagerly, intently, nodding at the pearls, enacting interest, for this is the president and he is the anchorman and surely something important is being said with two such important men engaged." "

DrPainMD:ThrobblefootSpectre: DrPainMD: What I believe is irrelevant. On December 7, we were two weeks away from bombing Japanese troops, and they knew it.

So what you are saying is after they bombed us, we started fighting back. Okay.

What I'm saying is that we started building air fields and training pilots a year and a half before December 7th. We would have started bombing them in the middle of December whether or not they bombed Pearl Harbor. Attack was imminent, which gave Japan a valid reason to bomb Pearl Harbor.

That couldn't possibly have been because Japan had already been in a war in China, occupied Manchuria for 5 years ,and was saber rattling about the rest of their "Economic Co-Prosperity Sphere". No. It was all American paranoia that caused the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor.

ThrobblefootSpectre:DrPainMD: What I believe is irrelevant. On December 7, we were two weeks away from bombing Japanese troops, and they knew it.

So what you are saying is after they bombed us, we started fighting back. Okay.

What I'm saying is that we started building air fields and training pilots a year and a half before December 7th. We would have started bombing them in the middle of December whether or not they bombed Pearl Harbor. Attack was imminent, which gave Japan a valid reason to bomb Pearl Harbor.

tinfoil-hat maggie:Gyrfalcon: So if we intervened in Syria it would be good; but if we intervene in Somalia, it's bad. Or is it that intervening in Syria is for the right reasons (to kill Assad) but intervening in Somalia is for the wrong reasons (to kill some nameless al-Shabab leader)?

I'm so behind on the talking points anymore.

No it's only bad if we can't build McDonald's and and Coca-Cola plants. Oh and don't forget let them make Nike's for $2 a day.

If Obama intervenes, it is bad and he should not have intervened. If Obama fails to intervene, it is bad and he should have intervened. If Obama asks us to decide what to do, it is bad and he is an indecisive and shirking his responsibilities as a leader. If Obama doesn't ask, it is bad and he is a would-be emperor. If Obama now does whatever we already said he should do, back when he wasn't doing it, it is bad and he is trying to make us look bad.

Gyrfalcon:So if we intervened in Syria it would be good; but if we intervene in Somalia, it's bad. Or is it that intervening in Syria is for the right reasons (to kill Assad) but intervening in Somalia is for the wrong reasons (to kill some nameless al-Shabab leader)?

I'm so behind on the talking points anymore.

Intervening in Somalia is good because it's a lawless shiathole where they have a documented history of being assholes and supporting regimes that have a documented history of trying to hurt us.

Intervening in Syria is bad because it's a first-world nation with a morally dubious government, but a government that is fully intact and friendly with other nearby states that are gnawing at the bit hoping we or Israel decide to intervene so they can launch World War 3. And any 'documentation' that the government alone was the only guilty party of using chemical weapons is dubious and should be treated with skepticism because it's the same bullshiat Colin Powell sold the Iraq War on. That and in many people's opinions, using chemical weapons is not enough grounds to invade a sovereign territory otherwise we'd have had to invade our own allies for doing the same thing, and we'd have to shut down the CIA for helping Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons on his own people and on the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War. So it's not like our hands were clean, even though Obama tried selling action on Syria based entirely on America needing to be the moral authority on the matter aka playing world police all over again, this time in a new country.

Gyrfalcon:So if we intervened in Syria it would be good; but if we intervene in Somalia, it's bad. Or is it that intervening in Syria is for the right reasons (to kill Assad) but intervening in Somalia is for the wrong reasons (to kill some nameless al-Shabab leader)?

I'm so behind on the talking points anymore.

Syria would be good, because it would then be part of the Arab SpringTM .

So if we intervened in Syria it would be good; but if we intervene in Somalia, it's bad. Or is it that intervening in Syria is for the right reasons (to kill Assad) but intervening in Somalia is for the wrong reasons (to kill some nameless al-Shabab leader)?

The target was described by the official as a "senior leader" affiliated with al Qaeda and Al-Shabaab, al Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia.

Wow. Looks like that whole "Al Quaeda has successfully struck against the great satan, surely this is a sign that all of us militant/terrorist groups should stop fighting and unite under their banner" idea isn't working out so well.

// By which I mean that even though they are still a somali operation that doesn't give a shiat about anything else, affiliating with Al Quaeda just earned them an explosive-driven leadership reorganization where, had they stayed independent, we'd just ignore them like we have every other terrible international crime being committed in Africa.

Wow, that poor guy. It must have almost broken his brain to take an entirely legitimate complaint with firm historical precedents undeniably indicating abuse of power and still make it sound like the usual mad bullshiat his comic usually spews.

Though I think this takes me off the fence between thinking he might be serious and thinking he's parodying right-wing arguments to make fun of how terrible he thinks their logic is. That has to be intentional mockery, to straight-face that he'd have to be harder-core than Jack Chick.